


The Longest Way Home

by chiiyo86



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5 Times, Angst, Canon Era, Character Study, Family Feels, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27120209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: Five times Number Five didn’t reunite with his family, and one time he did.Over the years, Five never stopped dreaming about how a reunion with his family would go. Even if some of those dreams were more like nightmares.
Relationships: Number Five & The Hargreeves
Comments: 12
Kudos: 92
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	The Longest Way Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darlingargents](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/gifts).



> I've never experimented with 5 +1 format, but I got hit by an idea and this treat was born! I really hope you'll enjoy it. Fair warning, Five's mind is a dark place sometimes!

_Five times Number Five didn’t reunite with his family…_

1.

It’d taken him the entire day to bury his siblings, using rubbles to dig the ground, pieces of broken beams, and even his own hands until they bled. He couldn’t dig a hole big enough for Luther and had to resort to piling up stones over his grave, his mind conjuring nightmare scenarios of rats or crows coming to pick at his brother’s body, at his eyes, at the fleshy parts of his face—it didn’t look like any animal had survived what had destroyed the world, but his thoughts couldn’t stay away from those awful images and they horrified him so much he wanted to throw up. 

At night, he found a spot in a not too badly destroyed building, using a piece of tarp as a makeshift roof to protect himself from the ever-present raining ashes. He rolled his jacket to make a pillow and curled up on the floor, trying to sleep. He’d cried so much that he had a headache now, and there was a hole in his stomach and a hole in his heart. _This doesn’t matter,_ he told himself. _I’m tapped out right now, but I’ll try again tomorrow and none of this will matter._

Hugging himself to calm the chills that shook his body, Five let his mind wander and daydream. Tomorrow, he would try time-traveling again. It would work this time and he would land on the night of the day he’d left. He would—

—blink into the vast, echoing foyer, stepping under the chandelier. The house looks cavern-like at night—it actually isn’t the first time he’s snuck around when it’s dark, but he’s usually with his siblings and it’s a bit more intimidating when he’s alone. Still, this is home, whole once again, a thousand times better than the ruined world he’s just come back from. As Five climbs the steps of the central staircase and makes his way to the upper floors, he wonders what he’s going to tell his siblings. He’ll also have to think of what to tell his father, but that can wait until morning. Should he tell his brothers and sisters about the end of the world? He thinks they might be too young for that. Five is the same age as they are, but in a day he feels like he’s aged ten years, whereas they’re still innocent. No, it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t say anything. He should tell Dad, though. Dad will know what to do.

As he reaches the narrow stairs leading up to the floor where their rooms are, Five is surprised to find that the light is on. The hallway outside their bedrooms is also lit up, which makes it feel less like an oversight and more like a deliberate action. Just as he’s wondering who left the lights on, one of the doors cracks open and Vanya slips out. 

“Five!” she exclaims-whispers. “You came back!”

Five wishes he had something cooler to say than, “Yeah.”

She rushes at him and throws her arms around his neck in a very un-Vanya-like display of emotion. “I was so scared,” she babbles against his neck, her eyelashes wet with tears. “I was worried you’d gotten lost somewhere or stuck in—in time and that you couldn’t come back.”

“I’m sorry,” Five says as his arms close around her, his throat feeling tight. “You tried to tell me that I was going too far but I didn’t listen to you.”

“I left the lights on so you could find your way to your room,” she says, letting go of him and wiping her eyes. 

“Thanks,” he says, so unbelievably touched by the attention that he might start crying too.

“Where were you?”

Five opens his mouth to reply, but the doors to Ben, Klaus and Diego’s rooms open, and then the ones to Luther’s and Allison’s, all the way across the corridor. In no time, Five is surrounded by all of his siblings—thirteen years old again, blessedly alive—and their exclamations and questions. 

“Oh my God,” Allison says, “Dad’s _face_ when you left!”

“Yeah and he made us t-t-train twice as long and hard because of you, asshole,” Diego says, elbowing Five in the side.

“Are you all right, Five?” Ben asks, tugging on his sleeve. 

“Did you go to the future?” Klaus asks excitedly. “Do they have flying cars? Who’s the president? Has fashion changed so men can wear skirts?”

Overwhelmed, Five doesn’t know what to answer first—it’s funny how in a mere day he’s forgotten just how loud his siblings can be—and he gapes at them, mouth open like an idiot, until Luther puts a stop to the ruckus by speaking louder than all of them together, “Shut up, everyone! Give him some space! Five, are you hurt? You uniform is all dirty.”

They all quiet down, though Diego grumbles a bit before he shuts up. Five feels his face heat up under Luther’s inquisitive look. “I’m not hurt,” he says. “And yes, I traveled to the future.”

“Fuck, this is so cool,” Klaus breathes.

“Language,” Luther chides him, and Klaus flips him off. 

“How is it?” Ben says, looking at Five with wide eyes.

“Oh, it’s great,” Five says. “The city has skyscrapers so tall that it looks like they actually touch the sky, and—”

He speaks for almost fifteen minutes, describing the future in great details to his awe-struck siblings, saying absolutely nothing true. 

2.

He had just turned eighteen when it occurred to him that he was now an adult, older than his siblings were when they left home according to Vanya’s book—all of them except Ben, who never got older than seventeen. Or at least he didn’t in one timeline, but since Five would come back on the same day he left and this time would stay with his family, then surely things would unfold differently and Ben would live to see his eighteenth birthday.

Five liked to tell Dolores about what would happen when he came back and she listened to him indulgently, not commenting much on the fact that his idea of it had been forced to change from what it had first been. He was different from them now, not just older but also harder. He wouldn’t fit right back in the team the way he’d used to.

It was a rare clear day and Five was sitting on a crumbled section of wall, taking in the pale rays of sunlight that managed to reach him. Dolores was sitting in her wagon, doing the same. 

“I’ll be five years older than them,” he said. “Shit, can you imagine that? Luther might be Number One but I’ll be like their older brother now. Oh, shut up,” he retorted, feeling himself redden at Dolores’ sarcastic comment. “Yes, age _does_ matter. At least five years surviving on my own has to make me a more legitimate leader than Dad arbitrarily making Luther Number One when we were little. If I can make it back before dinner on the day I left, I will—”

—jump in the dining room, right when his siblings have dragged their chairs back before sitting. He crashes in the middle of the table, among the glasses, plates and cutlery, causing a cacophony of cries and squeals to erupt around him. Five sits up, brushing broken glass off his clothes. 

He hears Vanya’s small voice say, “Five? Is that you?” and then all of his siblings are speaking at the same time. 

“Is that Five?”

“He looks older.”

“He’s so dirty! What happened to him?”

“Where were you, Five?”

“Quiet!” their father bellows and all of their mouths click shut, their heads dropping down. “Number Five, is that really you?”

“Yes,” Five says. “You said I couldn’t time-travel but I did it, Dad. I traveled more than sixteen years into the future. April 2019.”

He’s focused on his father rather than on his siblings, but he can _feel_ them twitch with the need to comment. His father’s moustache quivers before he finally says, “Get off the table, Number Five, so your mother can clean up the mess you made and set the table again. We’ll have dinner, and then you and I will talk about your time-traveling experience.”

Five slides off the table right next to Luther, who catches him by the elbow when his legs wobble as his feet touch the floor.

“Thanks,” he says, pulling his arm away when he actually wants to lean into the touch. But he’s the older brother and he can’t look weak.

“How old are you?” Luther asks. 

They’re about the same height now and Five can look his brother in the eye. Luther looks younger than Five remembered, though Five knows of course that he’s the same age he was and it’s Five who has gotten older. It sparks surprising protectiveness in him to think that it’ll be _his_ role from now on to watch out for Luther and the others. 

“I’m eighteen,” he says, and relishes the way Luther’s eyes widen and his mouth open in astonishment.

“You’re an adult,” Luther says, amazed. 

“Well, yes,” Five says, trying to be modest about it. “And the future, it’s pretty tough. I’ve been through a lot.”

“You should be the leader now,” Luther says. “You should be Number One. You’re older, and… I guess you’ve had more time to train with your power.”

Five catches their father looking at them disapprovingly and merely says, “We’ll talk about it later,” patting his brother’s shoulder and then leaving him to take his place between Diego and Vanya.

Their mother hums as she sweeps the broken glasses and plates off the table. “Welcome back, Five,” she says as she brushes past him, her smile the exact perfect amount of cheer and warmth, just as it used to be. 

“Thanks, Mom,” Five mumbles.

His siblings keep sneaking glances at him, curious and impressed. He knows he’s going to be assailed with a barrage of questions as soon as they’re out of their father’s stifling presence. He’s looking forward to it.

3.

When he turned twenty-nine, it hit him that he was the same age as his siblings when they’d died. With the years, it had become harder to imagine himself going back home in 2003 to his thirteen-year-old brothers and sisters. He was so much older now that they wouldn’t recognize him and he wouldn’t relate to them as kids at all. Despite this, it was only on his— _their_ —birthday that it occurred to him he should focus his efforts on the year 2019. He would have more chances to find the cause of the apocalypse if he didn’t land too much earlier. With his father out of the way, he would get a greater range of action. If he managed it in the year before his thirtieth birthday, he would be the same age as his siblings on arrival, the way it should be. It would mean changing a lot of his calculations to fit the new date of arrival, but he would also be reducing the jump by half, making it less strenuous for him. 

He was thinking about this as he leafed through a battered gossip magazine that he’d found fifteen years ago. He’d never had any interest in celebrity gossip, except for what the press had to say about the Umbrella Academy, but what made this specific magazine noteworthy was the article about the eventful divorce of one Allison Hargreeves with some guy whose name Five always forgot. If he’d kept the magazine all those years, it wasn’t so much for the trashy article, but for the pictures of his sister, smiling widely as she always did, loving the spotlight, and of a little girl, Claire, who was Allison’s daughter and Five’s one and only niece. 

“In 2019, she was five years old,” Five murmured, then lapsed into silence. 

Dolores asked him what he was thinking and then, guessing at his thoughts as she often did, demanded he tell her the story of how he would meet his niece. He always told her his stupid fantasies on how his reunion with his family would go, but this particular one somehow felt both too private and too silly, even for Dolores.

He waits outside the school, feeling awkward and overwhelmed in the middle of the crowd of people coming to pick up their kids. The air is cold and crispy, making Five hunch his shoulders against the temperature, burying his hands in his pockets. He peers at every face, hoping the pictures and having seen her corpse sixteen years ago would be enough for him to recognize Allison. When he sees her, holding a little girl by the hand, his breath catches in his throat. He hesitates about the best way to approach her until she walks next to him and he panics at the idea that he will lose sight of her, so he stands in her way and forces her to stop.

He understands it was the wrong thing to do at the way she narrows her eyes and pushes her daughter behind her. Apparently, Allison hasn’t lost all of her instincts—a good thing for the fight that’s to come, but pretty inconvenient right now.

“Who are you?” she asks in an imperious voice. 

“It’s me,” he says stupidly. “Allison, it’s me.”

He’s prepared an entire speech to convince her of his identity, but his thoughts have scattered to the four winds. He sees the little girl peep curiously at him around her mother and it’s making him feel terribly self-conscious. Has Allison told her about him? Probably not. 

“What do you mean?” Allison says, her tone less self-assured. Her eyes search his face and then widen. “Five?” 

“Yes,” he says, giddy at being recognized. He thinks he would have recognized Allison too, had he not seen her twenty-nine-year-old face already, if only for her eyes. Eyes don’t lie and Allison’s haven’t changed in sixteen years. 

“Where—where have you been? For god’s sake, Five, it’s been _sixteen years_.”

“Long story short, I traveled to the future. It’s shit, by the way.”

“The future? So you were right, then. You can time-travel. Why haven’t you come back sooner? We were all waiting for you. For years, we waited.”

“I tried,” Five says, “I swear I did, but—"

“Mom,” Claire whines, tugging on her mother’s sleeve. “Mom, who’s this?”

Allison rests a hand on her daughter’s head. “This is your Uncle Five, baby. Five, this is—”

“Your daughter Claire,” he says. “I know. Can I…?”

“Of course.”

Five gets down on one knee to be at Claire’s level. She looks at him with huge eyes as he says, as softly as he can to avoid frightening her, “Hello, Claire.”

“Hello, Uncle Five,” the little girl says. She smiles shyly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too. I’ve been waiting to meet you for a very long time, actually. Longer than you’ve been alive.”

He hears Allison stifle a sob, her fingers burying themselves in Claire’s curls. He wants to cry too, but it’s been a while since he’s shed a tear. 

4.

He was thirty-six and he was going to die. This was all he could think about as he lay on his bedding, wrapped in layers of ratty blankets and shaking so hard his teeth rattled. His head was killing him and from time to time he was wrecked by coughs that felt like they were tearing his lungs apart. Outside, a storm raged, threatening to wrench away the tarp and beams that kept his refuge together. He needed more antibiotics, more water, more food, but even without the storm he wouldn’t have been able to stand up and go get what he needed. 

“I’m sorry,” he said in a hoarse voice to Dolores, who was bundled in her own blankets, her head covered with a fur-trimmed hat. “I don’t want—to leave you alone, but—No, I’m _not_ being—” He was cut off by a coughing fit that left him with a bloody taste in his mouth, his eyes crying from the pain in his lungs. “—not being dramatic. You have to get ready for it. I’m dying. It’s kind of—kind of a relief, to be honest. I’m just so tired of… No, not of you, of course. Never of you. But I’m so tired. I just wish that I had time for… the things I wanted to do. Save the world. See my family again. Although… do you think they might be around? As ghosts, I mean. Maybe they’ve been with me the whole time and when I die, I will—”

—sit up, all the pain finally gone. Five can’t hear the storm outside anymore, though he doesn’t know whether it’s because it has let up or because he’s passed an invisible veil and the world of the livings is distant now. Because Five is perfectly aware of what has just happened, that he’s dead now. He feels no alarm at the thought, except for a vague intellectual curiosity about what’s going to happen now. Which of the various religions has gotten it right? Is there a heaven or an afterlife that will allow him to see his family again?

“Can you hear me now?”

Five’s post-death calm is broken at the unexpected voice, and if he still had a beating heart it would probably have skipped a beat. Not a lot of daylight filters into his refuge, but there’s enough for him to see that someone is sitting cross-legged next to Dolores. 

“Who’s there?” Five asks, squinting to make out the shadowed face.

The person, a boy from the sound of his voice, shuffles closer until Five can make out his features. It’s Ben. He’s taller than the Ben Five remembers, and his face is less round, but he’s still unmistakably Five’s quietest brother.

“Ben!” Five exclaims. “You’re here! How… well, what am I saying? I’m dead now, just like you. Are the others around?”

“No,” Ben says.

Five’s initial joy at seeing his brother is starting to dim with Ben’s somber tone. “Oh, okay,” he says, trying to hide his disappointment. “Did they… move on? Why are _you_ here, then?” 

“I’m not sure,” Ben says. “I guess the others died so quickly, they didn’t have the time to be tied down with regrets. I wasn’t so lucky; I had all the leisure to realize that I was dying.”

“I—yes, I read about it in Vanya’s book,” Five says. He doesn’t want to talk about this, doesn’t even want to think about it, but it’s unfair to Ben, who had to _live_ it.

“Vanya wasn’t there, so she doesn’t know the details. I’ll spare you the details too.”

“Thanks,” Five says weakly. Unease twirls where his stomach used to be.

“At least at the beginning I had Klaus to talk to, but since he died there has been no one.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Five says. “I won’t leave you alone anymore.”

Ben smiles a little, looking more like how Five remembers him. “Yes, it’s good. I was surprised to find you there after the end of the world. At least this explains why you never came back.”

“Yeah, I’m…” Apologies have never been Five’s strong suit, but this is important, so he braces himself and says, “I’m sorry I left. Dad warned me I wasn’t ready and I should have listened to him. I’m sorry that I was—”

“Stubborn?”

“Yes, I guess I was. I—”

“Hot-headed?”

“That too, but—”

“Arrogant?”

“Yes,” Five says, starting to feel a little wounded. Ben isn’t wrong, but this doesn’t make hearing it any nicer. “I’m sorry that I left the team and that you died.”

“Yeah,” Ben says, nodding. “Maybe if you’d been there, things would have turned out differently. Oh, well. You’re dead too now, so what does it matter?”

Ben stands up and walks out of the shelter, into the murky daylight, leaving Five speechless from the hurt. 

5.

After he was hired by the Commission and started his career as an assassin for the Correction Division, Five got access to a number of unusual luxuries. Electricity, running water, unlimited medication, sound walls and roofs. And pens and notebooks, so he could write his thoughts somewhere else than on ruined walls and the margins of Vanya’s book. He kept the book with him, of course, and wrote his most important calculations in it, but he had a more private use for his notebooks. He wrote his childhood memories in them, the ones he’d told Dolores again and again so he wouldn’t forget about his siblings. As he put them in writing, he never had to think much about the words, as he’d recounted them so often that they had become polished stories, with the gloss of mythos to them. 

The other kind of story that filled his notebooks were his fantasies about reuniting with his family. They felt like a childish indulgence now, something he would never have admitted to anyone who wasn’t Dolores, least of all his siblings when— _if_ —he met them again. The tone of those stories varied according to his mood, but more often than not they were a lot less happy than when he was younger. Call it cynicism, but he had a hard time imagining his homecoming going smoothly or happily. They’d moved on with their lives and probably barely thought of him anymore; even if they did, he was completely metamorphosed from the brother they’d known. There was nothing in the man he was now for them to think fondly of. This didn’t matter, he told himself; as long as he could stop the apocalypse, it didn’t matter much if his place in the family had been lost forever. 

More or less licitly, he’d gotten his hands on Commission files about his siblings, getting from them information that had missed from Vanya’s book, which had focused more on their childhood up till the point when Vanya had left home. This was how he learned about Diego’s vigilante pastime, which was… very Diego and rather funny to imagine. Diego probably enjoyed very much playing the hero outside of Luther’s shadow and their father’s restrictive rules. Sometimes, though, when Five’s mood was at its darkest, thinking about vigilante Diego didn’t bring a smile to his lips. Instead, Five imagined the very unlikely scenario of him running into Diego during one of his assignments. He doubted that the Commission would ever let him get close to the 21st century, and if they did, Five already knew that he would immediately break his contract and run back to his family. Still, his imagination sometimes ran away from him and let the possibilities unravel. What if—

—Five fires a second shot, just in case. Let it not be said that he botched an assignment by failing to make sure the target is dead. For good measure, he feels for her pulse, pushing bloody strands of dark hair out of the way to access her neck. He waits until he can be certain that her heart has stopped beating, then stands up, his knees cracking. He’s still jet-lagged from his previous assignment at the end of the 18th century and is looking forward to an early night. 

They’re in a cramped alley a few blocks away from the young woman’s place of residence. Five has chosen this location because there are no windows overlooking the alley and they’re in a neighborhood where Five’s two muffled gunshots will be unremarkable. A ray of moonlight falls on the woman’s slack face; for a moment, Five is distracted by a passing resemblance between his victim and the picture he has of an adult Vanya. As he forces himself to wrench his gaze away from her, something slams him into a brick wall. 

A fist connects with Five’s jaw. “You sick bastard!”

Five’s attacker is a man dressed in black and wearing a domino mask—how pathetic and childish. Five works his jaw, checking for damage from the blow. His lips curl into a sneer as he punches into his attacker’s stomach, his fist meeting solid muscles. The other man goes _oomph_ and jerks back a little, just enough for Five to blink and land behind the man, pointing his gun at the back of his head. He’s about to shoot when the man says, “Five?”

It’s dark in the alley, but suddenly Five can see the man as clearly as if it were broad daylight, the image superposing itself against the one of the corpse he found buried under rubbles over forty years ago. This is Diego; he’s sure of it. Five lowers his gun. 

“Diego,” he says. 

Diego turns around. In his right hand is one of the custom-made knives that he always used, giving Five a confirmation, if he needed it, that this is really his brother. 

“Five,” Diego repeats. “Is that you? You’re—”

“Old? Yes, I know. Time-travel is a bitch. It’s been a lot longer for me than it’s been for you.”

“Did you—” Diego points his knife at the body on the ground. “Did you do this? Did you kill her? Jesus Christ, Five, tell me you didn’t.”

Five could say that he hasn’t killed her and he’s almost sure that Diego would pretend to believe it. He’s about to say it, but what comes out instead is, “I can’t tell you that.”

Diego’s jaw clenches and he grabs Five by the collar of his shirt, pulling him in and pressing his blade against Five’s throat. Five lets him do it, feeling a strange sense of resignation overcome him. This is stupid; he has an important mission to accomplish and he can’t afford to die here, at the hand of his own brother.

“ _Please_ ,” Diego begs, his voice low and rough. “Tell me you didn’t kill her.”

“I can’t.”

“You asshole,” Diego chokes, tightening his grip on Five’s collar, his blade biting into Five’s neck. “You’re such an _asshole_.”

Five closes his eyes. He’s so very tired; time-travel jetlag is really getting to him. “Make it quick, all right?” he says to his brother. “That’s all I’m asking.”

… _and one time he did_

The fall is rough and Five ends up with a mouthful of dead leaves. He spits them and heaves himself up to his feet, feeling strangely encumbered by his suit. Once he’s up, he sees them approach him with cautious steps, looking perturbed. Vanya, who isn’t much taller than she was when he left; Luther, who on the contrary has become _massive_ ; Diego, wearing black leather and knives strapped to his chest; Allison, her head haloed with golden curls and wearing an elegant blue coat cinched at the waist; Klaus, in black fur and black eyeliner. They look both strange and familiar, because he’s seen those faces before but either as corpses or glossy pictures. Now their faces are alive with expressions of shock and disbelief. They’re real people he can talk to. Five wouldn’t be able to speak even if he knew what to say. 

What is there to say? To tell them that he’s missed them would be so beneath the truth that it isn’t worth saying. He’s wrapped his life around their absence, has imagined reuniting with them so often that the fact it’s happening now feels less real than the fantasies of it he’s had. Nothing that happens from now on can be taken back and it terrifies him. 

_Focus on your goal. Don’t let yourself be distracted._ Stopping the apocalypse is all that matters. Anything else is just the lingering childish daydreams of a lost boy.

Unsurprisingly, Klaus is the first one to speak. “Does anyone else see… little Number Five, or is it just me?”

Little? Five looks down on himself and finally finds something to say. “ _Shit_.”

Later, he’s in his room, changing his oversized suit for one of his old school uniforms. His room looks identical to when he’s left, as far as he can remember, and his uniforms are all freshly ironed. All those years, Grace must have been cleaning his room and taking care of his clothes as though he hadn’t left at all. It’s eerie; combined with the way he looks now, it throws him off balance, makes him feel like maybe he hasn’t left, like the apocalypse, the Commission, were all part of a long vivid nightmare. The conversation in the kitchen with his siblings was stressful and frustrating. Meeting their eyes was hard and they had so many _questions_. They’re noisy, unruly and argumentative, and it’s been so long since anyone has argued with Five. He has a headache, partly because of the time-travel and partly because his nerves are so jumbled. 

He finishes the knot on his tie and sighs. There is no mirror in the room, but even if there were one, he wouldn’t like to look at it. The stupid thirteen-year-old boy he was has been gone for a long time and he doesn’t want to see him be revived. What he needs right now is a cup of coffee, to get his head on straight and give himself a power boost. When he leaves his room, he almost runs into Klaus.

“Were you just standing out of my room like a creep?” he snaps, annoyed at having let himself be startled. 

Klaus raises both hands in a ‘calm down’ gesture. “I’ve been told I lacked boundaries before, but I swear I’ve just come to check on my dear brother who I hadn’t seen in sixteen years, Your Honor.”

“There’s no need. I’m fine.”

“I don’t know, in the kitchen you looked a bit… off.”

“What do you mean?” He _feels_ off, but he’d have sworn he’d acted normal when they were grilling him in the kitchen, or as normal as one could in those circumstances.

“It’s funny because you look _just_ the same, wow, this is such a trip—and I know what I’m talking about—but you’re also, I don’t know, kind of different. Like an evil doppelgänger.”

“Yes, I’m much older now,” Five says, struggling to rein in his irritation. “Do you have a point?”

“Now, see, that look right now is familiar. Maybe you aren’t that different, after all.”

“Are you done?” The tip of his shoe taps the floor. His fingers twitch, and he shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s never imagined in any of his fantasies just how hard it would be to talk to his siblings, how it would scrape his nerves raw like a grater. He feels ready to jump out of his own skin. “Am I allowed to go now?”

“Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t want to keep you there against your will,” Klaus says, his mouth pouting like the child he still is. “I guess sentimentality has dried up by the time you’re fifty-eight.”

Talking with Klaus, never an easy task even in the past, is turning his brain inside out right now. “Out of my way,” Five says. He tries not to show it, but it’s almost a plea.

“Sure,” Klaus says, moving aside with a bow and a flourish. 

As Five walks toward the staircase, Klaus’ voice rises behind his back, saying, “I’m glad you’re back, for what it’s worth.”

Five stops, doesn’t turn around but responds with a wave of his hand that Klaus is free to interpret however he wants. 

_Whatever. I don’t care. Me too. Thank you._

**Author's Note:**

> The last section is more bittersweet than I first planned it... I just figured that Five's feelings were probably pretty mixed during that reunion. Hope that made sense!


End file.
